The Corrections: A Novel (44 page)

Even for a big ship the sea this morning was poor footing. The regurgitative splats outside the Kierkegaard Room were almost rhythmic, a kind of music of chance, and Mrs. Nygren informatively brayed about the evils of caffeine and the quasi-bicamerality of the Storting, and the Söderblads arrived damp from intimate Swedish exertions, and somehow Al proved equal to conversation with Ted Roth. Enid and Sylvia resumed relations stiffly, their emotional muscles pulled and aching from last night’s overuse. They talked about the weather. An activities coordinator named Suzy Ghosh came by with orientative tidings and registration forms for the afternoon’s outings in Newport, Rhode Island. With a bright smile and anticipatory noises Enid signed up for a tour of the town’s historic homes, and then watched in dismay as everyone else but the Norwegian social lepers passed along the clipboard without registering. “Sylvia!” she chid, her voice shaking, “you’re not going on the tour?” Sylvia glanced at her bespectacled husband, who nodded like McGeorge Bundy green-lighting ground troops for Vietnam, and for a moment her blue eyes seemed to look inward; apparently she had that ability of the enviable, of the non-midwestern, of the moneyed, to assess her desires without regard to social expectations or moral imperatives. “OK, yes, good,” she said, “maybe I will.” Ordinarily Enid would have squirmed at the hint of charity here, but she was waiving the oral exam for gift horses today. She needed all the charity she could get. And so on up the day’s steep incline
she labored, availing herself of a complimentary half-session of Swedish massage, watching coastal leaves senesce from the Ibsen Promenade, and downing six ibuprofens and a quart of coffee to prepare for her afternoon in charming and historic Newport! In which freshly rain-laundered port of call Alfred announced that his feet hurt too much to venture ashore, and Enid made him promise not to nap or he wouldn’t sleep at night, and she laughingly (for how could she admit that it was life and death?) implored Ted Roth to keep him awake, and Ted replied that getting the Nygrens off the ship ought to help with that.

Smells of sun-warmed creosote and cold mussels, of boat fuel and football fields and drying kelp, an almost genetic nostalgia for things maritime and things autumnal, beset Enid as she limped from the gangway toward the tour bus. The day was dangerously beautiful. Big gusts and related clouds and a fierce lion of a sun blew the gaze around, agitating Newport’s white clapboard and mown greens, making them unseeable straight on. “Folks,” the tour guide urged, “just sit back and drink it in.” But that which can be drunk can also drown. Enid had slept for six of the previous fifty-five hours, and even as Sylvia thanked her for inviting her along she found she had no energy for touring. The Astors and the Vanderbilts, their pleasure domes and money: she was sick of it. Sick of envying, sick of herself. She didn’t understand antiques or architecture, she couldn’t draw like Sylvia, she didn’t read like Ted, she had few interests and no expertise. A capacity for love was the only true thing she’d ever had. And so she tuned out the tour guide and heeded the October angle of the yellow light, the heart-mangling intensities of the season. In the wind pushing waves across the bay she could smell night’s approach. It was coming at her fast: mystery and pain and a strange yearning sense of
possibility
, as though heartbreak were a thing to be sought and moved toward. On the bus between Rosecliff and the
lighthouse, Sylvia offered Enid a cell phone so she could give Chip a call. Enid declined, since cell phones ate dollars and she thought a person might incur charges simply by touching one, but she made this statement: “It’s been years, Sylvia, since we had a relationship with him. I don’t think he tells us the truth about what he’s doing with his life. He said once he was working for the
Wall Street Journal
. Maybe I misheard him, but I think that’s what he said, but I don’t think that’s really where he’s working. I don’t know what he does for a living really. You must think it’s awful of me to complain about this, when you’ve had things so much worse.” In Sylvia’s insistence that it wasn’t awful, not at all, Enid glimpsed how she might confess an even more shameful thing or two, and how this exposure to the public elements might, while painful, offer solace. But like so many phenomena that were beautiful at a distance—thunderheads, volcanic eruptions, the stars and planets—this alluring pain proved, at closer range, to be inhuman in its scale. From Newport the
Gunnar Myrdal
sailed east into sapphire vapors. The ship felt stifling to Enid after an afternoon’s exposure to big skies and the tanker-size playpens of the superwealthy, and though she won sixty more dollars in the Stringbird Room she felt like a lab animal caged with other lever-yanking animals amid the mechanized blink and burble, and bedtime came early, and when Alfred began to stir she was already awake listening to the anxiety bell ringing with such force that her bed frame vibrated and her sheets were abrasive, and here was Alfred turning on lights and shouting, and a next-door neighbor banging on the wall and shouting back, and Alfred stock-still listening with his face twisted in paranoid psychosis and then whispering conspiratorially that he’d seen a t
**
d run between the beds, and then the making and unmaking of said beds, the application of a diaper, the application of a second diaper to address some hallucinated exigency, and the balking of his nerve-damaged
legs, and the bleating of the word “Enid” until he nearly wore it out, and the woman with the rawly abraded name sobbing in the dark with the worst despair and anxiety she’d ever felt until finally—like an overnight traveler arriving at a train station differing from the dismal ones before it only in the morning twilight, the small miracles of restored visibility: a chalky puddle in a gravel parking lot, the steam twisting from a sheet-metal chimney—she was brought to a decision.

On her map of the ship, at the stern end of the “D” Deck, was the universal symbol of aid for those in need. After breakfast she left her husband in conversation with the Roths and made her way to this red cross. The physical thing corresponding to the symbol was a frosted-glass door with three words lettered on in gold leaf. “Alfred” was the first word and “Infirmary” was the third; the sense of the middle word was lost in the shadows cast by “Alfred.” She studied it fruitlessly. No. Bel. Nob-Ell. No Bell.

All three words retreated as the door was pulled open by a muscular young man with a name tag pinned to a white lapel: Mather Hibbard, M.D. He had a large, somewhat coarse-skinned face like the face of the Italian-American actor people loved, the one who once starred as an angel and another time as a disco dancer. “Hi, how are you this morning?” he said, showing pearly teeth. Enid followed him through a vestibule into the inner office, where he directed her to the chair by his desk.

“I’m Mrs. Lambert,” she said. “Enid Lambert in B11. I was hoping you could help me.”

“I hope so, too. What seems to be the problem?”

“I’m having some trouble.”

“Mental trouble? Emotional trouble?”

“Well, it’s my husband—”

“Excuse me. Stop? Stop?” Dr. Hibbard ducked a little and smiled impishly. “You say
you’re
having the trouble?”

His smile was adorability itself. It took hostage that part of Enid that melted at the sight of seal pups and kittens, and it refused to release her until, somewhat grudgingly, she’d smiled back. “My trouble,” she said, “is my husband and my children—”

“Sorry again, Edith. Time out?” Dr. Hibbard ducked very low, put his hands on his head, and peered up from between his arms. “We need to be clear:
you
are the one having trouble?”

“No.
I’m
fine. But everyone else in my—”

“Are you anxious?”

“Yes, but—”

“Not sleeping?”

“Exactly. You see, my husband—”

“Edith? You said Edith?”

“Enid. Lambert. L-A-M-B—”

“Enith, what’s four times seven with three taken away?”

“What? Oh. Well, twenty-five.”

“And, what day of the week is it today?”

“Today is Monday.”

“And, what historic Rhode Island resort town did we visit yesterday?”

“Newport.”

“And, are you currently taking medication for depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, epilepsy, parkinsonism, or any other psychiatric or neurologic disorder?”

“No.”

Dr. Hibbard nodded and sat up straight, rolled open a deep drawer in the console behind him, and withdrew a handful of rattling plastic-and-foil packages. He counted off eight of them and set them on his desk in front of Enid. They had an expensive sheen she didn’t like the looks of.

“This is an excellent new medication that will help you enormously,” Hibbard recited in a monotone. He winked at her.

“Excuse me?”

“Have we misunderstood each other? I believe you said, ’I am having trouble.’ And mentioned anxiety and sleep disturbance?”

“Yes, but what I meant was that my husband—”

“Husband, right. Or wife. It’s often the less inhibited spouse that comes to see me. In fact a crippling fear of asking for Asian is the condition for which Asian is most commonly indicated. The drug exerts a remarkable blocking effect on ’deep’ or ‘morbid’ shame.” Hibbard’s smile was like a fresh dent in soft fruit. He had a puppy’s lush eyelashes, a head that invited stroking. “This interests you?” he said. “I have your full attention?”

Enid lowered her eyes and wondered if people ever died of sleep loss. Taking her silence for assent, Hibbard continued: “We think of a classic CNS depressant such as alcohol as suppressing ‘shame’ or ‘inhibitions.’ But the ‘shameful’ admission that a person spills under the influence of three martinis doesn’t lose its shamefulness in the spilling; witness the deep remorse that follows when the martinis have worn off. What’s happening on the molecular level, Edna, when you drink those martinis, is that the ethanol interferes with the reception of excess Factor 28A, i.e., the ‘deep’ or ‘morbid’ shame factor. But the 28A is not metabolized or properly reabsorbed at the receptor site. It’s kept in temporary unstable storage at the transmitter site. So when the ethanol wears off, the receptor is
flooded
with 28A. Fear of humiliation and the craving for humiliation are closely linked: psychologists know it, Russian novelists know it. And this turns out to be not only ‘true’ but really
true
. True at the molecular level. Anyway, Aslan’s effect on the chemistry of shame is entirely different from a martini’s. We’re talking complete annihilation of the 28A molecules. Aslan’s a fierce predator.”

Evidently it was Enid’s turn to speak now, but she’d
missed a cue somewhere. “Doctor,” she said, “I’m sorry, but I haven’t slept and I’m a little confused.”

The doctor frowned adorably. “Confused? Or
confused
?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’ve told me you are ‘having trouble.’ You’re carrying one hundred fifty U.S. dollars in cash or traveler’s checks. Based on your clinical responses I’ve diagnosed subclinical dysthymia with no observable dementia, and I’m providing you, free of charge, with eight SampLpaks of Asian ‘Cruiser,’ each containing three thirty-milligram capsules, so that you may comfortably enjoy the remainder of your cruise and afterward follow the recommended thirty-twenty-ten step-down program. However, Elinor, I must warn you right away that if you are
confused
, as opposed to merely confused, it may compel me to alter my diagnosis, which may well jeopardize your access to the Aslan.”

Here Hibbard raised his eyebrows and whistled a few bars of a melody that his faux-disingenuous smile robbed the tune of.

“I’m not confused,” Enid said. “My husband is confused.”

“If by ‘confused’ you mean
confused
then let me express the sincere hope that you intend the Asian for your own use and not your husband’s. Where dementia is present, Asian is strongly contraindicated. Officially, therefore, I must insist that you use the medication only as directed and only under my strict supervision. In practice, though, I’m not naïve. I understand that such a powerful, relief-bringing medication, a medication not yet available on the mainland, often finds its way into other hands.”

Hibbard whistled a few more tuneless bars, a cartoon of someone minding his own business, while studying Enid to be sure he was amusing her.

“My husband gets strange at night, sometimes,” she said, averting her eyes. “Very agitated and difficult, and I can’t
sleep then. I’m dead tired all day and so upset. And there’s so much I want to
do
.”

“Aslan will help you,” Hibbard assured her in a more sober voice. “A lot of travelers consider it a more important investment even than cancellation insurance. With all the money you’ve paid for the privilege of being here, Enith, you have a right to feel your best at every moment. A quarrel with your spouse, anxiety about a pet you’ve left behind, a perceived snub where none was intended: you can’t afford these bad feelings. Think of it this way. If Asian prevents you from missing just one prepaid Pleasurelines activity due to your subclinical dysthymia, it has paid for itself, by which I mean that your flat-fee consultation with me, at the end of which you’ll receive eight complimentary SampLpaks of thirty-milligram Asian ‘Cruiser,’ has paid for itself.”

“What is Ashland?”

Someone knocked on the outside door and Hibbard shuddered as if to clear his head. “Edie, Eden, Edna, Enid, excuse me one moment. I’m beginning to understand that you really are
confused
about the state-of-the-global-art psycho-pharmacology that Pleasurelines is proud to make available to its discerning clientele. I see you need a bit more explanation than most of our cruisers, and if you’ll excuse me for just one moment …”

Hibbard took eight SampLpaks of Asian from his console, actually troubled to lock the console and pocket the key, and stepped into the vestibule. Enid heard his murmur and the husky voice of an older man replying, “Twenty-five,” “Monday,” and “Newport.” In less than two minutes the doctor returned, carrying some traveler’s checks.

“Is this really all right, what you’re doing?” Enid asked. “I mean, legally?”